"I walk the way I write / starting out all creaky, / sort of stumbling along, / looking for a rhythm. / Each footstep is like a word / as it meets the blank page..." A writer takes a break from working to venture outdoors and into spring, going on a walk that is marked by keen-eyed discoveries of the ordinary and the extraordinary found in the season's awakening. Ralph Fletcher's poems are exact and surprising, and graced with a sense of quiet contemplation. This soothing, satisfying collection is given narrative structure by the opening and closing poems, both titled "Walking" (one of which is excerpted above) and two additional poems, "Into the Woods" and "Looping Back," all of which chronicle the writer's physical progress and emotional transformation. Readers, too, will be transformed--by thoughts of the natural world and language and the wonder that each can hold as revealed within the lines of these poems. Black-and-white pencil drawings illustrating some of the poems complement the books's quiet mood and give readers another point of connection by depicting the "character" of the writer as a young person. (Age 11 and older)

A look into a young poet's journal

Thirty-three poems reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary things found during a walk to and through the woods, and offer glimpses into how observation of the everyday fuels a young poet's creativity. Clotheslines, stone walls, streams, birches, leaves -- even a Volkswagen Beetle -- shine in a different light when seen through the poet's lens.